Filing Information: December 2011, IDC #232129, Volume: 1

Storage Solutions: Storage and Virtualized Environments: Vendor Profile

V E N D O R P R O F I L E

T i n t r i — A N e w A p p r o a c h t o S t o r a g e f o r V i r t u a l i z a t i o n

Gary Chen

I D C O P I N I O N

Virtualization is the new normal in the datacenter, with virtual exceeding physical in

new shipments and in the installed workload base. Virtualization has had a ripple

effect on the datacenter, affecting every subsystem, especially storage. IDC finds:

Customers want to virtualize a larger and larger percentage of their workloads,

but challenges of scale and performance are obstacles. IDC data has shown that

on the storage side, managing capacity growth and application performance in

virtual environments are the top issues. Most customers are aware that storage

is usually the most important subsystem that can determine the success or

failure of a virtualization deployment. As most customers have already virtualized

the easy workloads, the remaining workloads are increasingly mission critical and

performance sensitive, demanding a greater level of storage support.

The nature of how storage is deployed is also changing with the emergence of

converged infrastructure and the role of VM admins, who hold increasingly

greater influence in IT. Support, optimization, and integration with virtualization

are already key for any storage vendor today as virtualization is ubiquitous and

the storage industry continues to focus on solving the unique storage problems

that virtualization creates.

I N T H I S V E N D O R P R O F I L E

This IDC Vendor Profile analyzes Tintri, a company producing a storage appliance

specifically designed for virtual environments, and reviews key success factors:

market potential, technology/solution, and corporate strategy.

S I T U A T I O N O V E R V I E W

C o m p a n y O v e r v i e w

Tintri, based in Mountain View, California, produces a storage appliance that attaches

to and is optimized specifically for virtualized environments. Founded in 2008, Tintri

launched out of stealth mode in March 2011.

Tintri is VC funded, having completed a Series C round, with a total of $35 million

raised to date. The company employs around 55 people, with engineering being the

largest group. It has a small marketing team and is growing the sales team rapidly, as

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well as continuing to add engineers. Tintri has put together a team with backgrounds

in storage as well as in virtualization.

Tintri VMstore

Tintri VMstore was built from the ground up to solve storage problems in virtual

environments. Tintri looked at host-based solutions and software-only solutions but

ultimately felt that a hardware solution built from scratch was needed. The primary

secret sauce is in the file system developed for the device. Being built from scratch

for virtualization, the device offers unique features for virtual environments:

VMstore manages use of the constructs used in VMware vCenter (VMs, virtual

disks) instead of storage constructs (LUNs, volumes, files, RAID groups).

VM-aware storage allows easier troubleshooting and performance tuning due to

the ability to easily pinpoint where in the stack, from the storage layer to the

guest OS layer, the bottleneck or problem is. VMstore is able to determine what

percentage of latency is generated from the hypervisor, network, guest OS, file

system, or media.

VMstore gauges give visibility into available performance and capacity left on the

device.

Snapshotting takes place at the VM level rather than at the LUN or volume level.

VMstore automatically aligns virtual disks to optimize I/O efficiency.

VMstore can "pin" individual VMs or virtual disks to flash for high-performance

workloads.

VMstore is easy to set up and manage. Since the appliance is built only for

virtualization, it is already configured and optimized for that use case. Customers

simply attach the storage to their VMware vCenter and begin working with VM

and virtual disk objects. Users are never exposed to the underlying storage

details. Each appliance is a single datastore, making it easy to map into vSphere

and to add more devices to scale out.

VMstore is offered in two configurations: an 8.5TB (useable capacity), 4U single

controller model (model T445) and a 13.5TB (useable capacity), 3U dual controller

model (model T540). VMstore is in its second generation, adding auto aligning of

virtual disks and the new dual controller model for high availability. The storage array

is a hybrid of both spinning disks and SSD in RAID 6 configuration that offers fast

performance while keeping the cost down. VMstore has dual 1GbE ports for

management and dual 10GbE ports for data for model T445 and quad ports for model

T540; the T445 lists for $65,000, and the T540 lists for $95,000. It currently only

supports VMware vSphere 4.x and 5.x via NFS, but the architecture is hypervisor

agnostic, allowing Tintri to support other hypervisors in the future.

©2011 IDC #232129 3

C o m p a n y S t r a t e g y

The majority of the leadership team has extensive experience in the industry,

specifically focusing on storage and virtualization:

Kieran Harty: Cofounder and CEO; previously executive VP of R&D at VMware

for seven years

Mark Gritter: Cofounder and Architect; previously staff engineer at Sun

Microsystems

Pratik Wadher: VP of Engineering; previously VP of engineering at Data Domain

Chris Bennett: VP of Marketing; previously VP of Product Management at

NetApp for 10 years

Tintri is differentiating itself with several key features unique to virtual environments

and marketing its solution as one that takes away the barriers to virtualization, rather

than focusing on pure price or performance, though certainly those are areas that

must be addressed to some degree. Tintri is focusing on a specific user profile:

Heavy virtualizers with over 100 VM admins who are experiencing pain with their

virtualization deployments

Using VMstore to address specific applications that are difficult to virtualize, such

as database

Targeting the large enterprise across all verticals

Focusing on enabling the storage admin to offer the VM admin self-service

Tintri has been using a sales model that has channel engagement in all its deals, led

by a direct sales team. VMstore is a complementary subsystem for virtualization and

thus generally gets included in larger virtualization deals led by partners that choose

Tintri to address certain scenarios. Tintri currently has over 40 customers, which

include TIBCO, Digital Chocolate, iPass, Northwestern University, Loyola Marymount

University, North West Group, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), and Semmes-

Murphey Neurologic and Spine Institute.

Tintri is primarily United States focused today but is expanding internationally, having

recently formed an EMEA sales team. Tintri also has two current distribution partners,

NOX in Japan and Zycko in the United Kingdom.

Tintri has stated that it has grown more than 100% quarter over quarter since launch.

F U T U R E O U T L O O K

Tintri has a unique product that homes in on a very specific set of challenges around

virtualization. As virtualization has already established itself as the new normal in the

datacenter, this lends Tintri many opportunities in the market, especially as customers

4 #232129 ©2011 IDC

run into a wall regarding virtualization and look for specific solutions that allow them to

virtualize more challenging workloads and achieve more scale.

The biggest challenge Tintri faces is from large incumbent storage vendors that are

able to address a wide variety of storage use cases and insert themselves into

enterprises as a single storage source. Certainly, the long-term exit strategy is

acquisition by one of these vendors that would look to bolster their virtualization

capabilities.

But in the short term, Tintri must focus on addressing workloads that others can't. The

key will be inserting itself into the right deals. Building out the channel will be critical

as VMstore can be folded into larger virtualization deployments as a specific problem-

solving solution that the partner identifies. Also, Tintri needs to identify specific

workloads that are suited to VMstore and partner with these ISVs and their channels

to present VMstore as a solution to bring these workloads into the virtual world.

There is a lot of focus in the market today on storage for virtual environments as

storage has shown itself to be the most impacted subsystem and the most critical for

virtualization success. With a new ground-up approach to storage in virtual

environments, Tintri has a unique offering that can be compelling to many advanced

virtualizers.

E S S E N T I A L G U I D A N C E

A d v i c e f o r T i n t r i

Recruit specific virtualization partners that are in a position to identify scenarios

that Tintri can address and bring them into deals.

Target specific ISV applications and get inserted into those channels to help

virtualize those workloads.

Continue to develop best-of-breed VMware integration. VASA and VAAI will be

important APIs to support as well as integration with VMware's Storage DRS and

profile-driven storage features. Partnering with VMware may be challenging as a

smaller vendor but important to stay ahead of the curve in supporting the latest

storage APIs and features as virtualization-specific features and integration are

Tintri's primary differentiators.

Build out a complementary ecosystem that can address issues such as backup,

replication, deduplication, and compliance management, and leverage Tintri's

VM-specific features to do it better.

Begin building support for other virtualization environments. While VMware

dominates the market today, major new releases from Microsoft and Red Hat in

the coming years are expected to gain share. As the market diversifies, it will be

important for Tintri to be able to address the full virtualization market, especially

as customers begin adopting multiple hypervisors and look for solutions that can

work across heterogeneous environments.

©2011 IDC #232129 5

Virtualization and converged infrastructure have changed the conversation on

who is involved with storage decisions. VM admins have been voracious

consumers of shared storage and certainly have unique needs. While these

admins are important and growing in influence, Tintri must realize that the

enterprise IT structure will be slow to change and must not exclude targeting the

traditional storage admins as well.

L E A R N M O R E

R e l a t e d R e s e a r c h

Market Analysis Perspective: Worldwide Enterprise Virtualization Software, 2011

(IDC #232074, December 2011)

Worldwide Storage and Virtualized x86 Environments 2011–2015 Forecast (IDC

#231080, November 2011)

Worldwide Virtual Machine Software 2011–2015 Forecast (IDC #229434, August

2011)

Worldwide Virtual Machine Software 2010 Vendor Shares (IDC #229442, August

2011)

C o p y r i g h t N o t i c e

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